See, that’s interesting, because the only time I hear any uproar about “lowering standards” is when people are talking about being inclusive.
They don’t say anything about lowering the bar when we’re talking about white men. It’s only when women and/or minorities are brought into the conversation that people start shouting from the rooftop that they “shouldn’t have to lower the bar!”
That’s anecdotal, but point taken. I would note however that the reason concerns of lowering standards tend to correlate with inclusiveness, is that inclusive approaches inevitably, inherently, are pursued by introducing factors other than merit into the process. Traditionally, hiring has been done based on merit above all, who is the best person for the job, until people begin clamoring that other factors weren’t related to merit. Given that, one can certainly understand the concern. The entire process of introducing diversity criteria into hiring is one where merit’s preeminent status is being diminished by having to be balanced against other factors. We can argue about whether those other factors are good things or not, appropriate or not, necessary or not, but regardless of any of that it must be accepted that their introduction into hiring criteria necessarily diminishes merit’s contribution which no longer reigns supreme.
All that to say, any movement away from solely focusing on merit will necessarily induce concerns about lowered standards.
The people who do that are also asserting that women and/or minorities inherently can’t perform at the same levels (or better than) white men. Which is untrue.
This goes back what i said in the other post, which is the bigotry of low expectations. It is absolutely not the people opposing diversity who assert that women/minorities can’t perform at comparable levels, in fact it’s the exact opposite. The people saying that women/minorities need inclusive hiring practices are the ones claiming that these groups will not fare well enough in a purely merit based system. I find that quite odd. What reason would someone have to think that if hiring were based on nothing more than who the best person for the job was, that women or minorities would not be successful? None.
Thinking that they would not fare well in such an environment, one based on purely competitive terms, is itself prejudicial.
